Search results

While Washington University in St. Louis (the University) has enjoyed success in recruiting higher numbers of low-income students, it has not achieved comparable results in ensuring an equally successful college experience for this underrepresented group. Data shows that low-income students, as compared to their financially unaided peers, have an inequitable undergraduate experience at Washington University that includes performance gaps in STEM-intensive curricula and less-robust co-curricular experiences. This chapter presents the outcomes of a report entitled “Honoring Our Investment” that focused on how, from an institutional perspective, to best support the academic and co-curricular success of low-income students at Washington University. The Undergraduate Representatives to the Board of Trustees of the 2015–2016 academic year wrote this report and compiled information, research, and data about the low-income student experience as part of a dialogue focused on improvement. Additionally, this chapter recommends changes for improving outcomes.

This research note focuses on the quest to move beyond the poverty paradigm in researching, planning, and developing distressed urban neighborhoods. It is based on the notion that the poverty paradigm hides more than it reveals about the positionality of people in neoliberal society. It argues that low incomes and joblessness are structural components of neoliberal economies. Therefore, they cannot be eliminated without making fundamental changes in the way that neoliberalism operates. Thus, in a neoliberal society, with a small, passive government, both low incomes and joblessness will grow over time, especially among blacks, Latinos, and immigrants of color. Within this context, the distress found in inner-city neighborhoods is a product of failed urban institutions and the lack of investments in such places. However, there are no laws of socioeconomic development that say low income and joblessness must equate with living in distressed neighborhoods, where dilapidation, crime, and violence are characteristic features of the landscape. This reality is a public policy decision. Therefore, it can be changed by altering the investment strategy in distressed community and by radically transforming the institutions operating in these communities. If this happens, it will be possible to produce communities where low-income workers live in energetic places where they enjoy a high quality of life and standard of living. In such regenerated neighborhoods, it will also be possible to develop innovative strategies that put the jobless to work.

The first objective of this study is to analyze whether financial behavior (FB), financial stress (FS), financial literacy (FINLIT) and the locus of control (LOC) influence subjective financial well-being (SFWB) among low-income households in Malaysia. The second objective is to investigate whether the use of digital financial services (DFS) moderates the influence of FB and FS, on SFWB.

Motivated by the literature on transformative service research (TRS), this study examines how the use of DFS impact SFWB among low-income households in Malaysia. Low-income households are chosen as they are more likely to be financially excluded and lack financial knowledge and skills. Using an interviewer-administered survey, trained enumerators collected data from 1,948 low-income households in Malaysia, selected using a two-stage sampling based on the National Household Sampling Frame obtained from the Department of Statistics Malaysia.

Results reveal that SFWB is positively influenced by FB and the LOC, and is negatively impacted by FS and FINLIT. The evidence shows that the use of DFS counterintuitively weakened the strength of the relationship between FB and SFWB, but effectively reduced the adverse effect of FS on SFWB.

To reverse the signs of relationship, financial services marketers need to identify the specific types of DFS that low-income households use in order to provide targeted marketing efforts and financial education to promote the use of DFS on a more holistic basis to increase financial well-being.

The findings of this study add to the body of knowledge deliberating on the opposing effects of technology on consumers' welfare and well-being. This study focuses on the lower-income stratum of Malaysian households as this group of the population is more likely to be financially excluded and have deficiencies in financial knowledge and skills. Findings of this study show that DFS use can actually diminish the positive impact of FB on SFWB while reducing the adverse effect of FS on SFWB.

The housing policies targeting low-income households have not been effective to address the housing needs of target groups in Iran over the past four decades. According to the World Bank’s data on population living in slums (% of urban population) in Iran in 2018 was 25% which is slightly higher than the rate 23% of upper-middle-income countries. This study aims to understand what major revisions are required in the process of housing policymaking to have more effective policies.

The authors conduct one-to-one interviews with 41 housing experts and apply discourse analysis and interpretive–structural modeling to achieve the goals.

The panel of experts argue that the success of housing policies in Iran depends on the following: all academic disciplines should be included in the process of housing policymaking process; land policymaking should be modified; housing policy is a regional issue, and it should be designed and implemented differently in each province; main modifications are required in the tax and tenancy system; and new policies are required to push vacant houses into the rental market.

This study is a prescriptive study based on a general trend (four decades).

This study aims to identify the key factors that influence the successful implementation of clean energy interventions in low‐income urban communities in South Africa.

The study took the form of three phases: an explorative, primary data‐gathering process through semi‐structured interviews where secondary data were made available by respondents in the form of official project reports; data analysis of the primary qualitative, explorative, semi‐structured interview data and the secondary documentary data obtained with consent; and identifying and describing the key factors which influence the implementation of clean energy interventions in low income‐urban communities.

The results indicated that although many important factors were identified throughout this research, the ultimate success of the implementation of clean energy interventions in these communities lies not only in the clean energy interventions themselves, but rather hinges on nine key factors: project planning and development; community participation; community employment; political buy‐in; communication and engagement; beneficiary criteria; installation and maintenance; project management; and technology and suppliers.

The findings from this study provide useful insights to all stakeholders involved in the development and implementation of clean energy interventions in low‐income urban communities.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether existing theories on saving behaviour and empirical findings on the determinants of saving behaviour can be generalised for the low-income households in developing countries.

The paper adopts Van Manen’s hermeneutic phenomenology approach. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with female household members that belong to low-income households and do not have any member of the household with a permanent job. Interviews were conducted in the cities of Bangalore and Indore in India. Lived experience of participants was captured using conversational interviews and thematic analyses.

The paper provides evidence that the existing literature on saving behaviour is inadequate in explaining either the saving behaviour or the determinants for saving for low-income households in developing countries. This paper finds evidence of poor institutional access and reliance on informal financial intermediaries for low-income households.

This paper establishes the need for a qualitative study with a large sample size to determine the policy interventions and institutional drivers that will encourage low-income households to migrate from the informal financial intermediaries to formal banking institutions.

To the best of author’s knowledge, this is the first qualitative paper aimed at understanding saving behaviour of low-income households. Extant literature is focused on normative economic frameworks that bear limited relation to the contextual realities of low-income households in the developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyse the methods of housing finance adopted by the low income and informal groups in Nigeria.

A survey of 300 households in selected areas (low‐income/informal) of Jos Metropolis, Nigeria, was carried out, concerning the methods of housing finance used for building and home improvement.

The survey showed that 75 per cent of the households utilized traditional methods of financing and 25 per cent using modern methods.

Based on data collected from the survey, the research serves as a basis for further research into traditional methods of housing finance in developing countries.

The analysis of traditional financing methods highlights the range and structure of the traditional methods of financing in operation in informal and low income areas of Jos Metropolis, Nigeria. For example, informal and customary/traditional methods (Esusu/Asusu, Age grade association, Men's Revolving Loan Association, Social club contribution among others), of financing appear to be very effective housing finance methods.

The paper shows that In the absence of formal institutional financing methods, strengthening the community‐based social network through formalisation and empowerment for housing finance becomes vital.

It is argued that it is possible to utilise and formalise these traditional methods of housing finance, in order to enhance access to finance for housing development in low‐income urban areas in developing countries.

Housing costs are very high in Yemen compared with Middle East countries, which caused a shortage of housing supply especially for low‐income groups. This paper aims to develop affordable housing design for people with low income and to examine their ability to afford houses in Sana'a, Yemen.

Two different questionnaires were used to achieve the study objectives. The first one was to examine the requirements and needs of low‐income groups, while the second was to analyze the feedback of professionals in relevant housing authorities in Sana'a. An affordable house design methodology was used to design alternatives of low‐income housing in order to minimize cost and environmental impact while maximizing the social acceptability in housing projects.

The results show that the low‐income group can afford new houses in Sana'a in consideration of the following: constructing multi‐storey housing units such as apartment system through using the concrete frame structure and building the internal and external walls with concrete blocks with limited areas (65‐120) square meters.

The findings could be used to improve housing affordability through housing policies in Yemen in order to decrease the housing shortage particularly for the low‐income group.

This study aims to investigate the house purchase behavior of low‐income Saudis regarding the sources of financing they wish to have access to, their preferences for alternative financing options, and the monthly payment amounts they could afford to make in case of mortgage financing across demographic groups.

A survey with a sample of 815 low‐income respondents with a monthly income of SR7,000 was conducted using a structured questionnaire.

The main findings of the study are that the loan from the government Real Estate Development Fund (REDF) is found to be the most preferred financing alternative, the second being cash payment; whilst the most frequently indicated option for monthly mortgage payments is between SR1,000 and SR1,500 (US$267 and US$400) among low‐income Saudis.

This study provides a snapshot of low‐income Saudi consumers' knowledge of financing options and their choice among alternative financing options.

This also offers opportunities for real estate developers to seek competitive advantage by coming up with innovative financing options to target low‐income earners.

There is limited published work exploring consumer knowledge of house purchase finance options that captures this phenomenon from the perspectives of low‐income Saudi consumers. This study contributes in filling this gap.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the impact of racial and low-income quotas on academic performance of students from public and private universities in Brazil.

Using propensity score matching applied to student-level data from the National Examination of Student Performance conducted in 2012; this paper identifies the impact of the quota policy on academic performance considering all Brazilian universities.

The results indicate that there is no statistically significant difference in academic performance between students admitted under the racial quota and those who had the regular admission (non-quota students). The impact is positive, however, for students from the North region of Brazil and among those with very low family income, whereas a negative impact is observed for those from the Central-West region. In regard to the low-income quota, quota students perform worse than eligible non-quota students as their scores are, on average, 14 percent lower. Similar findings are observed when different subsamples are considered.

This paper’s main contribution is to provide a broader and more rigorous empirical approach than that presented by the existing literature in order to evaluate the impact of quota policies on academic achievement. Moreover, this study considers all Brazilian institutions whereas previous studies are limited to only one or a few universities.